Beginnings: Interrogating Hauerwas (6) repentance

The outline of the book is in this post. This excerpt is from Chapter five, ARE CASUISTRY, NATURAL LAW, AND VIRTUE METHODS?

We’re into a pretty technical discussion in this chapter about Hauerwas’ method of theological ethics. Within a closing dialogue on habits and virtue, Brian Brock’s questions lead into this exchange about repentance (151-52)

As I read this, it is all connected back to Hauerwas’ emphasis on truthfulness and honesty – with ourselves, with others and with God.

It is also an interesting take on discerning the will of God and making decisions. Many is the time we pray, take advice, and make decisions that seem the best – but later, if things have not worked out, we look back and wonder what the heck happened there? This can lead to all sorts of theological contortions and introspection – how did we get God’s will wrong? But for Hauerwas this is not the real question – he is much more focused on how we take ownership of our decisions and repent of our mistakes.

BB: Could you explain how you understand repentance to work within your journey account? … How wedded are you to the claim that Christians should know they are making progress in the Christian life?

SH: We tend to think that the moral life is prospective, namely we always think, “How do I get it right in the future?” when in fact the most powerful form of our lives is how to make sense of our lives retrospectively. We think, in terms of prospective decisions, if we just get clear on fundamental principles and what the facts are, we’ll get it right. And then later we look back on those decisions when we thought we knew what we were doing and have to say, “My God! How could I have done that?” Well, you must take responsibility for it if you are to be who you are. And that means you must be able to repent in a way that the past becomes your past. So repentance makes possible our acknowledgment that when we didn’t know what we were doing, what we did was wrong and we must take responsibility for it. Otherwise, you will not have a self. So that’s the way I think about repentance.

And he follows up with this comment

SH: What usually messes us up is not what we do but our need to give justification for what we do. So one of the disciplines of the Christian life is to learn that I do not have to justify my life, but rather, I can acknowledge I’ve lived a life less than it should be. And yet, I don’t have to go on reproducing that. That’s a form of repentance that I want to say is crucial for our being able to think that we have lives worth living.

To which Brian Brock feeds back and summarises eloquently what he’s hearing from Hauerwas

BB: So, in fact, there’s a perception. We could refer to that as a revelation because you have been doing that all along, it just never occurred to you and it never appeared to you as morally relevant or you had strong internal rationalizations and deceptions to keep on doing it. So the questions of how repentance happens internally is going to be tied up with something that broke in on us to reveal a whole pattern of thinking and behavior as needing to be given up. And that looks a lot closer to some of the biblical language about the dependence for sanctification on the work of the Holy Spirit.